Restaurant Reviews

Hangawi: a vegetarian shrine in another space and time

25 July 2000

Behind big oak doors lie this gourmet vegetarian Korean restaurant. It
was next door to The Avalon hotel
where I was staying. My ex-colleague suggested it. He insisted on the
emperor set menu for two.

"Are you sure it's not too much?"

No, he assured me as we took our shoes off and moved to our reserved
table. The floor was polished and clean. We sat next to a couple of older
women.

The appetisers came first. Each presentation was a piece of art. I was
almost afraid to touch the delicate forms. "You can eat the flowers,
too," my friend chewed on the decorations. I had only come across
such a setting in Tokyo. Yet here was this little secret, right next to
my hotel.

Good vegetarian food does not encroach. It does not remind you that it
is vegetarian. I tasted fruit, vegetable, nut, wild rice, and other natural
treasures finetuned in traditional Korean style. It was even better than
the Zen Palette another friend had taken me a year before. I was fascinated
then. Hangawi is a new experience, topping the gourmet vegetarian cuisine
I had in Hammersmith, London (in a converted church).